A few weeks ago our church had a sermon series about marriage. One thing our pastor said married couples should do is have side by side activities that you enjoy to do together. If you don't have something like that, pick something your spouse is interested in, and learn to like it too!

I thought I'd share some things my husband and I like to do "side by side."

Nothing fancy, just some things we both like to do, so enjoy together!

1. Going on long walks.

We love walking! I could walk for days. In the warm weather we usually go on a walk every day. We like walking to new neighborhoods and checking out all the houses, getting ideas and seeing what we like. We always play a little game called "Rate the House" (actually we've never named it, I just made that up.) We rate each house on a scale of 1-10. Then at the end of the street we pick the best and worst house.

2. Texas Roadhouse

Joey will only ever let us eat 2 places, so luckily I like both of them. (The other is Cheddars). But we love us some Texas Roadhouse! We order the same thing every time and it is delicious every time. Joey gets a 6 oz steak with a baked potato and salad with Ranch and sweet tea. I get a grilled chicken salad with Honey mustard and water. If we are in the mood for an appetizer we get fried pickles.

3. Redecorating/rearranging/redoing our house.

We always have a project going. Right now it is the kitchen. This is probably the biggest thing we like to do together. Joey does all of the heavy lifting, but we always decide what its going to look like together. We also like going out and looking for things when we want to change up a room. We are both very frugal and like to find the best deals.
Here are some examples: here, here and here.

4. Our tv shows

Please tell me we aren't the only couple who most nights just watch tv all night? We have a few shows we like to watch together.
First of all, our favorite, Parenthood.
We were actually a little late to jump on the Parenthood bandwagon, and spent a few magical weeks catching up on every episode right after the other. Oh those were good days ;) But seriously. That show.
We like Modern Family, True Blood, X Factor, Hart of Dixie and Happy Endings.
We also faithfully watch Wheel of Fortune every night and wait with anticipation hoping our Spin ID is called and we will win $5k. One of my life goals is for Joey to go on Wheel of Fortune.

I'm still waiting on Joey to teach me to play tennis...that is one of his hobbies that I would like to learn how to do. But I do try and go watch him play as often as possible.
See: 2007, the last time we played tennis

So none of these "hobbies" (can you consider Wheel of Fortune a hobby?) are that exciting, but just a few examples of things we like to do together!

Being that the name of this blog is "happy girls are the prettiest girls" I thought I would start sharing a few of the random things each week that make me happy.

First up, this pic represents my new kitchen! I'm sitting on the floor in our kitchen Friday night as my husband decided he wanted to paint. Last weekend he ripped up the old dirty linoleum we have been hating living with for 3 years and installed new tile. I'll share before and after pics when its all done. Which better be soon or I won't be happy because my kitchen is a mess.

Also makes me happy my husband is a handy MAN!

Oooh oooh this makes me very happy. My favorite spot in the mall parking lot. What is safer than parking next to the "reserved for sheriff" spot. Who would mess with me! Plus it gives me plenty of room for my stroller. Shep was happy about this too, as you can see in that little angel face.

Speaking of angel face, this is the very anti climatic result of giving him a lemon. But what makes me happy is that we successfully went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse and Shep let us both finish our meals without insisting to be held. He was too busy flirting with every female in the restaurant to care about old mom and dad.

Finally, this was taken as I waited to be taken back for my massage today. Had myself a little spa day, woohoo!
(Side note: Am I being picky in thinking that a 60 minute massage does not mean 52 minutes? And then her noticing I looked at the clock so trying to make up for those precious 8 minutes by talking to me about the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? Although, girl let me tell you, I can TALK about some BH drama.)

We've been doing a lot of "spring cleaning" around here...more like lots of home updating and little upgrades that make a big difference. I can't wait to share!

We have an older home and all of the trim work in our house was a dingy off whiteish color. But it stayed that way because who in the world wants to paint the doorways, closets, windows, baseboard, corner round and doors of an entire house? Definitely not us and we assumed paying anyone would be way too expensive. Well Joey randomly got in a conversation with someone he works with and she mentioned that her husband is a professional painter. He asked her to get a quote for us, just wondering how much it would cost. He gave us a quote we couldn't pass up and happened to have that weekend open. Thankfully we had pretty weather because we packed Shep up everyday and headed out to stay away from paint fumes. It was such a nice little family weekend.

Lexington was hosting a Antique and Garden show that our friend was working, so we went to see him and check that out. We also spent a lot of time outside and going on long walks. Here are a few pictures.

Didn't realize until time to walk out the door that we were all matching dorks in our black and white cardigans.

We are so happy with our new bright white trim. It makes the biggest difference and makes our house feel crisp and new!

Shepherd LOVES to read. The only time he sits still is when he is looking at books or being read to.

For awhile now he has been clapping whenever we say "Yay!" It is so sweet.

I've been trying to teach him how to also clap when we say "clap." In one of his favorite books, there is a page that says "Llama Llama clap clap clap."

I always clap on that page and wait for him to do it, but I always have to say "yay!!" before he will clap.

Well, yesterday Shepherd was sitting in the floor reading a book. I was just sitting in the rocker watching him. He was holding it correctly and looking at each page before flipping to the next. When he got to the clap clap clap page in his Llama Llama book, he put down the book and started clapping!!

I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to do it to our fridge. I cleaned it all out and it felt good to deep clean that thing! I went to Target and bought some plastic placemats (clearance!) and lined the fridge with them. Now my fridge is pretty and instead of taking our shelves to clean I can just remove the placemats and wipe them down!

Jenn tagged me in this little game forever ago...here it finally is, my list of 5 random things about me!

1. I have a really good memory, especially if I've seen something in print.

2. Sometimes I eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It is my favorite. Once I went to Trader Joe's to stock up on hummus and they were completely out. I asked the manager to check the back and said if they have any I would take three. "Oh are you having a party?" "...no..."

3. I am obsessed with safety. Safety First is my motto in life. Here I am with some of my recent purchases: fire escape ladder, carbon monoxide detectors, extra fire alarms in front of the baby gate.

4. I have naturally curly hair but I don't think anyone knows it. We've had multiple people talk about Shepherd getting curly hair from his daddy. I'm like, "hello?" This is what it looks like when I don't dry it:

5. I think my least favorite chore is putting away clothes. Because it never ends. Every day there is more laundry!